[MATHA531]

Is the phone for roaming with your US carrier or is it for buying a local sim...chances are if it's the former, they will be able to find a network to roam on however if you buy a local sim, and I have seen people get burned very badly by this, you have to be aware what frequency the local sims predominate on...I read of somebody who had such a 900 deficient phone for use in Croatia who bought a Croatian prepaid sim and when it didn't work, she was told by know nothings that was because the phone was locked (it wasn't) it simply was unable to register on a network that used 900 almost exclusively in Croatia.

Such are the problems we Americans face because of the American refusal (albeit perhaps logically so) to standardize on the same technologies and frequencies as most of the rest of the world.

And to further complicate matters for us, T Mobile which once upon a time used to sell tri bands with 900/1800/1900 as it is an international carrier and uses only 1900 in the USA, now sells its tri bands as 850/1800/1900 as it has several roaming partners in the USA who use 850...and not only that, especially in the case of nokias, you have no way of knowing you're getting these phones as Nokia uses the same model number for the real world phones it makes and the ones it is forced to adapt to American networks (except for the letter b at the end of the model which many sellers don't tell you about either deliberately or because they don't know).